History of indenture labor migration
Indenture was a worldwide phenomenon which started in the 19th century. It was an experiment in Mauritius. After the abolition of slavery demonstrate to the world the superiority of free labour over slave labour. Indenture involved mass migration of labors from India, China, Africa and South East Asia to labor importing colonies. Mauritius was the first country which had recourse to indenture labour. The Mauritius success this system then other colonies adopted. The defining feature of 19th century plantation labour was the indenture system to a written contract entered into by a person to work for another for a given period of time. Indenture migration was individual who had not paid his or her passage.…show more content… To this group indenture symbolized their low status in the British Empire and was resoonsib1e for the prejudice against Indians disn1ayed by European co1onists. In their desire to rid themselves of the "coo1ie" stigma, the Indian nationalists sought the abolition of indenture.Faced with opposition from powerfu1 colonial interests, the anti-indenture forces tl1reatened India-wide agitation if their demands were not met. They reinforced their arguments against indenture with such convincing evidence of abuses in the system that many of the most sta1wart imoeria1ists became convinced that the abolition of indenture was necessary to preserve the integrity of the British Empire. A1tl1ouoh indentured emigration was final1v halted in 1917, resentment had a1readv been aroused in India by what was regarded as the precedence of colonial interests over India's, and much of the optimism about the benefits of participation in the Empire-Commonwealth was…show more content… The Indenture system, although based on a contractual agreement between employer and labourers, differed from other forms of contractual labour that existed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Indentured labour derived its authority from the various Acts regulating relations between Masters and Servants (enacted in most colonies) which were established to set out mutual rights and obligations but in reality they provided criminal punishment for breaches of contract by workers. In Mauritius, Ordinance no 16. Of 1835, was designed to combat so called .idleness of apprentices and to legislate indentured labour. The contract made punishable by forfeiture of wages or imprisonment with or without hard labour where a Servant without reasonable